Our adventures, stories and pictures.

Vivid Sydney

The Vivid festival was a few weeks back; this is Sydney’s annual light, music and ideas show… and it’s spectacular.

For the last two years we’ve only really paid attention to the light show part of it. The music and ideas bits are interesting too, but more trixy to get to with toddler in tow. The lights, however, are a winner no matter what the age.

This year, they added a second venue very near to our house, which we made it out two twice during the two week event. The second venue wasn’t as decked out as the main core, but it did have two awesome features. My favourite was the harbour water fountains. Each hour giant fountains of water would shoot across Darling harbour in a very carefully timed dance. As the jets died down, residual water droplets hung in the air and acted as a moving canvas for a playful light and music show that could only be seen or heard from certain angles nearby.

The local maritime museum also transformed itself into a small bar, serving local wine and beer, with a kid friendly light and sound stage along the water side. We spent a good hour here while Xavier danced in the dark to Funk hits of the 70s.

The big show was a little further away in circular quay. Several of the buildings in the inner harbour had really elaborate light displays projected on them. The opera house is the most iconic:

Others were equally stunning though. Sarah’s tops was the super dynamic presentation on the modern art museum.

Mine was the interactive display on Cadman’s Cottage. You could finger paint on an image displayed on an iPad, and see the results broadcast on the building live. Every 15 minutes the state was captured, tweeted, and reset for the next person to play. In these next three photos, some young girls were decorating with monstrous ladybugs.

Xavier’s favourite defied pictures. It was essentially a trellised fairy light garden, 15 meters long. As you walked through, thousands of small lights flickered different colours all around you.

Other displays were a little more tame, or unluckily broken down while we were visiting. Some were very elaborate – like an exhibit where light chased you as you moved across the sidewalk, or an interactive flower garden projected onto a wall that allowed you to swat at the virtual butterflies and flowers. Others were just pretty lights on an interesting surface.